If your client says he’s travelling to a certain city the next day and asks if you could organise a media meeting for him there, what do you say? Do you quickly call up your branch office or your affiliate in that city, make a super-fast pitch note, and ensure that he gets the media interview he wants?

On one hand, this might look great that you are able to get things done no matter what. On the other hand, you might be actually putting the axe on your foot. Allow me to explain why.

What young PR managers must remember is that good client servicing is not just delivering on the account, but also managing your client expectations. We know that our clients are paying us lacs of rupees per month and if they have their way, they would expect an ET front page story everyday. We know this is not possible.

So when you take over an account, remember the client is gauging you. You need to show your pro-activity and creativity yet put your foot down on certain items that you think are going slightly out of the way as you have discussed. A no is a no. Otherwise the client starts thinking that if you can get things done so easily today, maybe you can do it next time. His expectation increases. So going back to our previous question, we should have explained to the client that any media interaction takes 2-3 days to get confirmed. So organising one the next day is out of the question. Lost opportunity? Yes. But look at the benefit in the long run. You are managing his expectation and making him realise that you do things in a planned manner. If you don’t manage this then, tomorrow he will want you to organise another interaction at another city and so on. If you get him an ET coverage, take time to celebrate it and explain to the client the efforts that have gone in. If you don’t, he might as well start expecting another ET feature next week, and in a few months maybe every week. Of course all these are possible if there are significant announcements and things to say. PR agencies have enough bandwidths and network to pull off various media activities in a few hours, leave alone a day. But as a client servicing manager, your job is also to think from the agency perspective of handling the client for a period of many months – and not one burst of stories coming out in one month and silent the next month.

There may be another school of thought here that believes that if you want to build up a positive relationship with the client, you might have to walk the extra mile and go out of your way sometimes to build his trust on you. There might be circumstances that are genuine and need the PR agency to turn around fast with results in no time. Do not ignore those situations and do your best there, for instance in a crisis situation, or a major industry development on a particular day. The client will appreciate that. But when it comes to activities that are not critical, perhaps agreeing to everything at the last minute might actually be building a client expectation management failure waiting to happen in the future.

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